By Sola Isola
Ursula K. Le Guin once said, “To light a candle is to cast a shadow.”
This invariably means no light, no shadow. This is the best way I think I can use to describe the recent conversations I have read, most of which is credited to Hon. Wole Oke, the member representing Obokun/Oriade Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives.
The defection and the statement is not the real issue, the real issue is that Hon Wole Oke has been living in the shadow of Senator Ademola Adeleke since the day Imole became the Governor of Osun State. The real issue is about influence and control.
Wole Oke himself knows that Ademola Adeleke being the Governor of Osun State has reduced the hold and influence he used to boast of having over the party, that’s why you hear him boasting of sponsoring the PDP for 12 years and also claiming to have the account details of all party leaders in the state as if that is an achievement as the leaders were the first to invest and make him so rich, if he thinks he’s a billionaire today.
Wole Oke knows that the moment PDP became the ruling party in the state, Governor Adeleke became the leader of the party and then to add salt to his injury, PDP also won all Senators and House of Representatives seats in the state, thereby further depleting his hold even in his constituency.
Wole Oke is afraid of Ademola Adeleke knowing fully well that the Governor loves and surrounds himself with young people. He noticed that the entire House of Assembly members are young people, and there are several Special Advisers and Senior Special Assistants who fall within the youth and young adults age bracket. This is like taking more people out of his threshold.
Wole Oke knows that Adeleke is a fair political leader who is more concerned about fairness than political correctness and that Adeleke is well aware that in Obokun/Oriade Federal Constituency, the party has given the ticket to one person from one local government out the two local governments for 24 years, of which he won 5 times out of 6. Oke knows that Adeleke as a fair leader, may decide to listen to the groaning of the people of federal constituency and support call for the ticket to be shifted to Oriade Local Government which hasn’t gotten the ticket for 24 years.
Wole Oke knows that Adeleke will not hand him an automatic ticket to return to the House of Representatives, rather, Adeleke will ask everybody to go to the field. That has always been the way His Excellency won his tickets too. Meanwhile, Wole Oke doesn’t like such competition.
Wole Oke himself knows that Ademola Adeleke is popular and he knows that anybody within the party that is more popular than him poses a threat. That was why even before Adeleke was 6 months in office, he had gone to record videos of bad roads in Ipetu Ijesha, same roads that have been bad for decades even when PDP was not in government and Wole Oke was an opposition leader, speaking about it then could easily facilitate rehabilitation or reconstruction of those roads by the virtue of his office.
Wole Oke undermined the power of Ademola Adeleke as the Governor of Osun State and that is why he rushed to announce that he wanted to recruit Teachers shortly after the announcement by the state government. The question that arose then was, where has that gesture been for close to two decades of serving as a member of the House of Representatives?
The truth known to everybody is that Wole Oke was never in support of Ademola Adeleke because he knows that having a Governor will diminish his influence and dominance on the PDP. As a matter of fact, in the build up to the 2022/3 elections, Oke’s campaign vehicles only carried pictures of Atiku Abubakar, Senator Francis Fadahunsi, himself and the two House of Assembly candidates from his Constituency. None of them had the picture of Adeleke or the Imole Mantra which the whole party has adopted at that time for governor.
Wole Oke in 2018 referred to Senator Ademola Adeleke as a tenant in PDP asking why a tenant who just came will want to be Governor in 2 years when there are people like him in the party.
Wole Oke is still threatened by the dominance and acceptance of Adeleke in the party and in the state, that’s why I wasn’t surprised when the news came out that he created a WhatsApp Group to support former Governor Oyetola less than one year after the Governor assumed office even though he was in the PDP, because he had a record of always doing that.
The major issue Wole Oke have with Ademola Adeleke is not about performance, at least, he can see the roads being constructed; he is aware of the repayment of loans owed in the name of the state by his new found friends; he is aware of repayment of salaries owed by his friends; and even the implementation of promotions that his friends ignored. He can see how both pensioners and workers are celebrating the Governor.
Wole Oke’s issue is personal because he knows that the continuous reign of Adeleke as the Governor will rule out his dominance and influence in the state and he will no longer be able to demand tickets like he used to do.
Saying APC will win Osun in 2026 is to be able sell his candidature to his new found love and party which surely is fair in the game of politics, the only issue really is if one man can comfortably seat in the corner of his house to determine for the people of an entire state who to vote for because he is displeased on a personal ground. Is this about the people?
How does anybody in this century describe the 28,000 votes margin as a narrow victory when in 2018, the margin for which APC was declared winner was less than a thousand votes.
I also saw the tacky reference to COVID-19 and this has been one of the major issues I had for a long time. There is this continuous sentiment that former Oyetola didn’t have enough time to govern the state when he was Governor and this they justify by saying that in his first year he was in court, his second year COVID-19, and then EndSARS, so he had less than two years left to do anything.
The funny thing about this, is the fact that Osun is the only state in Nigeria where this excuse is used to explain why a Governor couldn’t do so much or why he failed in office for four years. Reflecting on this, I wonder what other Governors would be saying to their citizens and residents because most of them were in court at the same time and all of them had to tackle COVID, as a matter of fact, Lagos was the worst hit for both EndSARS and COVID-19. Besides, there were interventions from the Federal Government and even private sector. Even more, loan repayment were suspended for states for a period of one year to ease the impact of the health emergency on their finances.
The game is the game, and Wole Oke’s card is to secure favour from former Governor Oyetola seeing that he is close to the President and can easily influence Osun APC to get almost anything done, at the end of the day its all gimmicks.
Sola Isola is a Media Aide to Governor Adeleke of Osun State.
